How I Learned to Create Retro Game Characters

you know lately I've been going through retro phase so for today I want to share how I went from this 2D illustration to this 3D character but hey I'm Kevin it's like Kevin but it's [Music] Kevin there's something magical about video game Graphics from the pre- 2000s with the launch of the PS1 and N64 3D graphics and gaming had just started making their way into the mainstream things were much much more simpler back then games often heavily relied on visual trickery to create the illusion of real-time Graphics but it's all these limitations that led to this iconic style that defined the pre- 2000s whether it was the unsettling grunge horror aesthetic that came from the low res bitc Crush textures or the more cutesy comfy lfi Vibes that came from the simplification of its visuals this error despite being well past its expiry date is having a huge comeback there are tons of indie games that use this pre-2 fasten aesthetic to great effect I myself have recently done my own set of experimentations trying to replicate this style so let's discuss some key elements that Define this aesthetic and the most noticeable one of them all has got to be those blocky low poly models you see a lot of constraints were tied to artist in order to maintain performance on these older consoles a character's triangle count would typically land between 400 to 800 tries textures would also similarly have restrictive limitations with them on the PS1 generally being about 128x 128 pixels with the absolute Max being 256x 256 now I could yap on about the technical side forever but if you're curious Linked In the description below is an awesome post on poly count by poly Herz that has a great overview on retrographics seriously do check this one out so initially my focus was on creating PS1 inspired visuals however today I wanted to aim a little higher in Fidelity something more akin to what you'd see in a handhold console like the PSP or DS so with all of this in mind we're going to try to stay as true as possible to the style but we're going to take a few Liberties this isn't a onetoone recipe this is inspired so I'm going to import a base mesh I previously made to use as a starting point it's nothing real complex but with that being said I will be posting the final model and Basse mesh up on sketch FB in case you'd like to study the models in further detail the main key thing I want to note here with the Basse mesh is that I've tried to keep my UV somewhat straight As with the smaller texture size f things can look a bit off otherwise we'll expand upon that more later now with big ugly imported and the concept in place we're finally ready to get started so we begin by just lining up the geometry to match the concept the main thing I'm focusing on is just nailing the silhouette of the character if I don't think an element is particularly important to the character's silhouette then I just ignore modeling it and will instead up to draw it on during the texture stage I've also applied some quick material just so I can have a general idea of how the shapes are playing overall some of you may have noticed I've got some triangles placed in the model and that's because for low poly models triangles are your friends if you notice it just flipping out like this slice in the triangle and that will control the orientation of that face and another thing you might also notice is that I've got some Triangles around the knee and elbow the purpose of these triangles is to have better deformation for when the joints Bend of all of that in mind we just carry on with the [Music] blockout now with the blockout done it's time to move on to the UVS our main focus is to try and straighten up the UVS and ensure there's an equal spread of pixels I'm going to cheat here and have two textures for the character one for just the body and one for everything else this is sort of going against my retro aesthetic however my current polyon isn't helping my case here either but regardless for this piece I did want it to be a bit more higher infidelity so we'll just keep things as is now when working with lower rise textures you might want to turn on Pixel snapping to do this in blender under the overlay Options under guides select pixel and then enable snapping and under its settings select increment and tick absolute grid this will affect the give you pixel snapping but I have noticed it being slightly off at times When selecting clusters to remedy this you can use selected to pixels which can be found under the uv's menu within Snap I've got this bound to my mouse as this will be something will be using throughout the UV process you also want to make sure the texture you viewing is the correct resolution you're aiming to match I'll often use a color grid when I'm working on the UVS as it'll allow me to visually see any UV warping or in proper pixel density I'm essentially using the default blender color grid but I've just removed the numbers as they were a bit too distracting when working in this style I tend to make sure all my UVS are straightened this does mean my UVS are more prone to texture warping so I do need to be more mindful of my topology here this is why during this stage I'll often be readjusting some of my topology to ensure that the texture warping is is as minimal as possible while this can be a pain to deal with I much prefer texture painting when my UV are straight like this when I'm working on low R textures it can be difficult to paint some areas due to the lack of pixels but this technique allows me to have more control over how my pixels orientate it also creates a Pixel Perfect output which simplifies the texturing process now the size of your UVS are also important throughout this process I am checking the seams of my UVS and ensuring each UV island has an equal pixel density if they aren't equal then this means you'll start to see some nasty seams which isn't the worst thing as you can use these seams to Showcase any separations of the model but for me I feel like challenging Myself by having an equal pixel density across the entire model except for the face the face is the only exception as I want have doubled the resolution which will allow me to have much more detail and since we won't be seeing the back of the face as much I've done the opposite and I've scaled it to be significantly smaller but with the UV is done it's finally time to start getting creative and work on painting the textures you see when it comes to the style a ton of its flavor comes from how we approach its textures this is why I want to quickly discuss lighting older game consoles had much more effictive light lighting capabilities developers had to heavily rely on pre-rendered lighting which would be most evident in the backgrounds of games the final fantasy series has great examples of this so due to these graphical limitations characters would heavily rely on Textures with baked lighting now with that in mind let's start texturing before this model I'd used substance paina as my main texturing tool but this time around I decided to give fruity code a try as of heard great things for when it comes to hand painting textures so with that being said we still boot up substance pan out for our first step which is baking our Maps I'm aware you can do some of this in 3D coat but I'm using substance just because I have a Nifty little smart material that I've built which will give me everything I need so I'll quickly do my bases tweak my material and then export these textures for me to use in 3D code and now fruity coat booted it's time to finally finally start painting out of every stage this has got to be the most freeing point of this entire process if you've done everything correctly then all you have to do is just paint throughout this process I'll be constantly flipping between 3u code and Photoshop and this is because they just work perfectly in tandem with each other making it really easy for me to swap between a 2d and a 3D painting workflow so I first start off by painting in grayscale only where my main focus is just capturing the correct color values it's during this stage that I also recapture those missing details that I chose not to initially [Music] model with the gray scale painting done it's it's time to add color to add color I just create a Flats layer that I place on top of my stack and set the blending mode to hard line once I've got my colors blocked out like this then I do one final pass under a new regular layer which I'll use just to do some overpainting and once I'm happy we're ready to move on to rendering before we hit that render button we'll quickly rig up the character using Auto rig Pro so we can get it into pose as far as compositing goes all we have to do is slap on some simple composite nodes within blender from drips PSX FX this will get us the Retro look we're aiming for after all is said and done this is our final [Music] result so that's how I approach a more retro inspired 3D character just a reminder that I will be uploading the final model and bass mesh on sketch FB and if you'd like to support the channel you can also purchase the bass mesh now that I'm in the post project stage I can definitely Identify some areas that I would have chosen to do differently now I do think that going with the two texture Maps was a bit overboard I wish I had started all within the one texture or as two 128 size texture Maps I originally went for the two larger Maps as I wanted more resolution for the face but I quickly realized towards the end that it was a bit Overkill I'm also a bit unsure about having the full set of fingers as I think adopting the hand mid approach would have been more effective here but despite these issues I'm still very happy with what I made as I learned a lot during the process so closing up I know I spent a lot of today yapping about the technicalities of this style and that I broke quite a fair few of these rules in the process I guess my main takeaway from this project was to try and not get too bogged down with the specifics and just make something cool because at the end of the day you should be your own chef and cook to your taste but hey that's been me have a wonderful day everyone and remember stay safe and stay creative [Music]

Channel: Keven

Views: 208,096

Keywords: Learning 3D, Anime Art, Hatsune Miku, Pokemon, 3D Animation Process, rigging, stylized animation, anime illustration, cgi animation, retro, 3ds, 3d render, digital art, 2D to 3D, texturing, lowpoly, low poly, blender, 3d coat, substance

Id: 1FteWqBSg4c

Length: 12min 6sec (726 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2024